How to locate NFC chips on Google Play for Education tablets

October 15, 2014

Today we are looking at 3 of the Google Play for EDU tablets, and what I’d like to concentrate on is the NFC chip placement, and it’s really important because the location of those chips determine how you need to align these tablets when you’re provisioning them, and on each device, that chip is located in a different spot.

So the three tablets that we have here today are the Asus Transformer, the new Nexus 7, also made by Asus, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4.

We already have how-to posts on resetting and provisioning these devices, but when you need to provision them, it’s also really important to be sure the NFC chips are aligned.

Asus Transformer

First, we’ll be looking at the Transformer—why do I want to look at this one first? Well, it actually is labeled quite easily out of the box. They were nice enough to place a little sticker over the exact location on the back of the tablet, so when you’re enrolling two Asus Transformers, you’re just going to line them up according to that spot.

Nexus 7

The chip on the Nexus 7 is located on the back end, just below the “N” in the word “Nexus,” so that’s kind of convenient—the NFC located just below the actual “N” on the device. So if you were provisioning two Nexus 7s, you’d just hold them together there, making the “N”s align, and if you were going to provision with an Asus Transformer, you’d need to place the “N” just over the Transformer’s NFC label.Samsung Galaxy Tab 4The Samsung tablet is a little tricky, because nowhere does it tell the location of the NFC chip, but through some testing, we determined that it’s located on the backside, about 1 inch to the left, and about 1/8th of an inch down from the printed “Samsung” logo.

Conversely, on the front, you’ll find it just about here:

So if you were going to provision the Nexus off of the Tab 4, you’d just align the “N” over that space. Now, of course you’ll want to be sure that both screens are turned on, and with two different devices, you’ll be holding them in a configuration like this

So just keep that in mind as you’re buying tablets, that NFC chip placement is different among all these devices, and if you’re going to be provisioning these yourself, you’ll want to have a handle on these chip locations, so that provisioning ends up being an easy process!